![]() What would it have taken to get you to stop using if you hadn’t been arrested? I wanted a way where I could keep using (heroin) in peace without someone constantly harassing or shaming me about my use.” You assert that addiction and overdose deaths are a public health crisis, not a criminal crisis. Lewis: Looking back on your years of addiction, you said, “I seriously entertained the idea of voluntarily living in my car. ![]() The cure to addiction is compassion, not vengeance. Will society actually be safer if their sentence is 10 years versus three? We have been sold a lie that punishment is the cure to addiction. A detective or a district attorney will perform legal acrobatics to stretch the definition of “high level” and ensnare even the most peripheral of participants. Godvin: When you give law enforcement a tool to be used sparingly, they will always find ways to overuse or abuse it. Lewis: What would be your objection to rewriting HB 2797 to instruct law enforcement to use it only to prosecute high-level manufacturers and dealers? What is the goal? Is it to save lives and reduce rates of overdose, or simply find someone to blame and punish? Giving people even longer sentences won’t save lives. The archetypical villainous drug dealer is a myth. ![]() They turned to dealing to maintain their habit, often out of an aversion to crimes that required you to victimize someone, such as theft or fraud. The vast majority of dealers I knew were users first and foremost. Imprisonment and the lifelong brand of a felony are significant consequences. Morgan Godvin: Today in Oregon, delivery of a controlled substance is a class A felony punishable by a years-long prison sentence, depending on previous criminal history. What do you say to the argument that without Taylor’s Law, Oregon drug dealers face no significant consequence? He died of an overdose at the age of 24 in 2017. Victoria Lewis: HB 2797, also known as Taylor’s Law, is named for Taylor Martinek, a Jesuit High School and Portland State University football player who became addicted to opioids after a shoulder injury. HB 2797 died in the House but could be reintroduced for a vote in 2020.Ī fierce advocate for prison reform and an outspoken critic of mandatory minimum sentencing for homicide by overdose, Godvin spoke candidly of her past addiction and how having money allowed her to rehabilitate herself while serving time. It requires a sentence of four to 10 years for a person convicted of unlawful delivery or manufacture of an illegal drug that results in the death of another person. Oregon House Bill 2797, introduced in the 2019 session, like the Len Bias Law, imposes mandatory minimums for homicide by overdose. ![]() According to a 2018 Pew Charitable Trust report, higher rates of drug imprisonment do not translate to lower rates of drug use, arrests or overdose deaths. In reality, it more often catches family, friends and other people battling addiction. It is intended to ensnare big dope dealers and reduce rates of addiction and overdose. Godvin was sentenced under what’s known as the Len Bias Law, named for a Maryland basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986. With the Spanish fluency she gained in prison, she works as a medical interpreter. Upon her release a year ago, Godvin, 29, enrolled as a community health education major at the OHSU-Portland State University School of Public Health, where she is earning a 4.0 GPA. She spent 20 months in county jail, two years at Dublin Federal Correctional Institution in California and a year in community confinement. ![]() Godvin, indicted in federal court on charges of delivery resulting in death, was sentenced to five years in prison. On March 28, 2014, she sold a gram of heroin to her friend Justin Delong, who overdosed and died. When her mother died of a prescription-drug overdose, 24-year-old Morgan Godvin, a four-year heroin user, continued to shoot up, sinking ever deeper into hopelessness, grief and depression. ![]()
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